The Arrangement (25 page)

He laughed down at me. “How did you guess?”

By now we had reached the wooden bridge just above the Home Woods, and Raoul said, “Let’s cross over and go home along the other shore. That way we can look in at the bathhouse and see if the boys are still in the pool.”

I agreed and we turned toward the bridge. It was too narrow for two horses to go abreast, so Raoul went first on Satan.

A third of the way across, the big black gelding stopped as suddenly as if he’d run into glass. Narsalla almost ran into his rear, the stop was so sudden. Then Satan began to snort and back up, and for a minute I thought Narsalla and I were going to be crushed against the wooden rail by his enormous rear end.

Raoul forced Satan to take a step forward to free us, and he yelled to me, “Get off the bridge, Gail!”

I managed to back Narsalla off the planks of the bridge, and we stood on the shore and watched as Raoul tried to persuade an increasingly frantic Satan to go across. Finally, when the gelding refused to respond to all of Raoul’s leg and voice commands, he resorted to giving the black a good whack behind his girth.

At that the horse rose straight up into the air.

My heart lunged into my throat as I watched the gigantic gelding come down and knock into the fragile wooden rails on the side of the bridge.

“Get off of him, Raoul, before he kills you!” I shouted.

Raoul had already come to that conclusion and was dismounting right there on the bridge. Then, holding Satan’s reins in his hands, he turned the animal carefully and led him to join me on the shore.

Satan’s coat was covered in sweat, his eyes were rolling, and he was trembling all over. He was obviously terrified.

“But what could have happened to frighten him so?” I asked, looking around me at the peaceful morning.

Raoul said in a quiet voice, “It has just occurred to me to wonder if there is something wrong with the bridge.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“The main bridge across the river lies farther upstream,” he replied. “This particular bridge is only for the use of the Savile estate, and as you can see it is neither very large nor very substantial. The wooden supports are supposed to be checked regularly as part of the ongoing castle maintenance, but perhaps someone forgot. At any rate, I will have John send someone out here immediately to look them over. You and I will return home by the road on this side of the lake.”

“Since the bridge may indeed be damaged, we should put some kind of sign up immediately to keep people off of it,” I said. “The boys are supposed to come this way after their morning swim.”

“You’re right, Gail.” He thought for a moment. “There is always rope at the tree house,” he said. “I’ll go and get it and rope off the bridge at this end. And as soon as we get home I’ll send someone out to the bathhouse to warn Mr. Wilson not to use the bridge until it is checked.”

He had been patting Satan’s neck the whole time we were talking, and the horse was beginning to calm down a little. I thought that most men finding themselves unable to force their horse to their will in front of a woman would right now be beating the poor animal unmercifully in retaliation. I looked at Raoul’s gentling hand, at his long, tapering, aristocratic fingers, and felt myself slide a little deeper into love.

* * * *

“Would you mind walking back to the house by yourself?” Raoul asked as we left our horses in the stable yard. “I want to find John as quickly as possible so that I can have that bridge checked.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” I assured him.

The first thing I did when I got to the house was to go up to the nursery, but unfortunately the boys had already gone. Miss Elleridge was there with the girls, preparing to take them outdoors to play.

“Mr. Wilson took the boys to swim in the bathhouse pool, Mrs. Saunders,” the governess told me kindly.

“I want to swim in the bathhouse pool,” Caroline announced. There was a martial glitter in her brown eyes.

“Me too,” said dark-eyed little Jane.

Her two blue-eyed elder sisters looked doubtful. “A pool would be awfully scary,” said Maria, the eldest. “One might drown.”

Frances, the middle child, said, “Swimming is for boys, not girls, Caroline.”

Caroline stuck her stubborn little chin into the air. “My papa says that I am just as clever as my brothers. And girls can too swim! My mama can swim. She is going to teach me next year, after the new baby is born.”

“I want to learn to swim too,” Jane said loudly.

Caroline gave her a lordly look. “Well, if you’re nice to me, Jane, perhaps my mama will teach you.”

Poor little Jane, I found myself thinking. She would have to spend the rest of her childhood being dependent upon other children’s mothers for attention because she surely didn’t get any from her own.

I left the nursery and descended the stairs to my room, where I changed out of my riding clothes and into one of my unfortunately serviceable morning dresses. Then I went along the passageway to the Little Drawing Room, which was the comfortable room on the second floor where the ladies liked to gather in the morning. Ginny was sitting at a writing table engaged in writing a letter. She looked up and smiled when I came in.

“Sit down, Gail,” she said. “I’m almost finished, and I’d love to go for a walk around the garden before luncheon. I’ve been indoors all morning.”

I smiled and agreed, looking around the room to choose a place to sit.

The room was done in green damask with gilt beechwood chairs with green velvet upholstery. A large, gilt-framed mirror adorned one of the walls, and an armoire, with brass handles made of lion masks, adorned another wall. There was also the writing table, with brass lion-mask handles, at which Ginny was sitting. The windows were open to the summer day and I went to sit on the beechwood chair that was closest to them. I gazed toward the stables and thought about Satan’s behavior earlier that morning.

More and more I was beginning to think that Raoul’s feeling that something was wrong with the bridge might be correct. Animals have a sixth sense about danger that humans don’t possess, and in a fearful horse like Satan, that sense was probably very highly developed.

“Finished,” said Ginny, and I turned to look at her. She was wearing a green muslin morning dress that ended at her ankles, showing matching green leather boots. The dress was highwaisted and full, affording as much concealment as possible for her swelling stomach. Her dark gold hair was brushed into a seemingly casual topknot that had probably taken her maid half an hour to achieve.

I said, “Do you want to change your shoes before we go out?” It had rained last night and if we left the garden paths to walk down to the lake I thought we might run into a few muddy spots.

She gave me a surprised look. “No. I’m wearing boots.”

I too was wearing boots, but mine were brown and well worn and sturdy.

She must have seen my thought, because she gave me a sudden smile. “These boots are not as frivolous as they might appear, Gail. They have been through their share of mud puddles, I assure you.”

I started to apologize, but then her smile won me over. “Perhaps it’s the color that fooled me,” I said. “They are such a perfect match for your dress.”

“I was reared to be a countrywoman and when I am in the country I know how to dress,” Ginny told me. “I have never been one to spend my time parading around garden paths in silk gowns and soft leather shoes.”

Her voice was scornful and I thought she might be speaking of someone in particular, but I did not feel it was my place to ask who that someone might be.

We had a very enjoyable walk, wandering across the lawns of the back garden, sitting under the cedar tree for a while, then walking under the trees of the small grove. I told Ginny about what had happened at the bridge that morning and she agreed worriedly that the structure ought to be checked.

We returned to the house in time for luncheon, which was not a formal meal but was served individually as each person arrived in the dining room. Ginny and I were eating fruit and a slice of cold turkey and Harriet and Mr. Cole were industriously tucking into beef pies when John came in, a frown between his brows.

“Raoul isn’t here?” he asked.

“No. We haven’t seen him,” Ginny replied. “Did you have the bridge checked, John?”

“Yes. That is what I want to talk to him about.”

“Was there something wrong with it?” Ginny demanded.

“As a matter of fact there was,” John replied. He took his place at the table and said to the attentive footman, “I’ll have some cold meat and cheese.”

I frowned and leaned forward. “What was wrong, John?”

“One of the main supporting beams was broken. If Raoul and Satan had gone out onto the middle of that bridge, the whole structure would have gone down with them. Considering the weight of Satan, it’s a miracle that it didn’t come down as it was.”

I thought of the swiftly flowing river under the bridge, and my whole body felt the crash of Raoul and Satan going through the shattered wooden planks, of Raoul being trapped under Satan’s body or his head being struck by one of Satan’s hooves as they fell, and I felt physically sick.

“Thank God for Satan, then,” I murmured almost to myself. “He sensed something was wrong.”

No one appeared to hear me.

“What I want to know,” Mr. Cole said angrily, “is what kind of a havey-cavey operation you run here, Melville. Don’t you have this property maintained at all?”

John went rigid. “I have a very organized maintenance schedule, Cole. This should not have happened, and I intend to find out why it did.”

“Well, I for one will be mighty interested to find out the answer to that question,” the merchant boomed. “Any one of us could have gone across that bridge and found ourselves takin’ a bath!”

“I can assure you that my inquiries will be most thorough,” John said as stiffly as before.

I said, “You have sealed off the bridge, of course?”

“Of course. There are men working on it right now.”

At that moment, Raoul came into the room. He took his usual place at the table and listened with no expression on his face as John told him the news about the bridge. Then, still without commenting on the bridge, he turned to his sister and put a letter in front of her.

“A messenger just brought this from Austerby, Ginny. I think you should read it immediately.”

She frowned, put down her knife, and picked up the letter. We all watched her with unabashed curiosity as she read.

“Oh my God.” She looked up. “Do you know what this says?” she demanded of her brother.

“The messenger told me something about it.”

At that moment, Roger walked into the room. He looked at Ginny’s white face and said, “But what has happened?”

“There’s been a fire at Austerby,” Ginny said. “Hallard—my steward—writes that the whole east wing has been burned.”

“Are you sure he said the whole wing?” Raoul said sharply.

“Here.” His sister handed him the letter. “You read it.”

He spread the paper before him and we all sat in silence as he perused the words. He looked up. “It could have been worse, Ginny. The servants all got out. No one was hurt.”

“I can’t believe this has happened,” Ginny said a little hysterically. “And Gervase is away at one of his stupid scientific conferences!”

“You don’t mean that,” Raoul said evenly. “You’re just upset.”

“But I can’t leave Hallard to see to this all by himself. And I can’t go down to Austerby myself just now, either!” Ginny was starting to sound even more hysterical.

“I will go down and take a look for you,” Raoul said. “I’ll assess the damages and see what really happened and what needs to be done to put the house into shape again.” He patted her hand. “I really think that if the fire was as bad as Hallard is indicating, there would have been some fatalities. Let me take a look.”

“Would you do that, Raoul?” Ginny asked. “I would be so grateful.”

“Of course I’ll do it,” he replied. “I can leave this afternoon and be there by dinnertime.”

“You can put up at the Pelican if the house smells too bad,” Ginny said.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “And don’t upset yourself! I’ll take a look for you and come back with a report tomorrow.”

Ginny smiled. “You are the best of brothers,” she said.

Across the table, the golden eyes met mine with regret. Tonight, I thought, I really was going to have to sleep alone.

It rained that night and I lay awake for a long time listening to the drumming of the drops against the windowpanes and thinking about my future.

What had I done to myself by coming here to Savile Castle? I had been attracted to Raoul Melville in a way I had never felt before with any other man, and I had let that attraction influence my behavior. I had told myself that a summer’s dalliance wouldn’t harm anyone, that at the end of it I would walk away with everything that mattered to me still intact. I would have my independence and I would have my son, and what more did I really want?

As I lay awake in my lonely bed, the answer to that question was painfully clear. I wanted Raoul. Two nights and two days had been enough to tell me that. My body wanted him and my heart wanted him, and already I could see that the longer I remained around him the worse it was going to get for me.

I didn’t try to fool myself by pretending that this arrangement of ours had any chance of ending respectably. The Earl of Savile would not—could not—marry a widow whose social origins were so far beneath his own; one, moreover, whose child’s origins were shrouded in scandal and doubt. No, for Raoul our affair was nothing more than a summer arrangement that would end when John found me a new establishment and I went off to resume my old life, as Raoul would resume his.

Deep down I had known that I was doing wrong when I had taken Raoul as a lover. It certainly hadn’t taken God very long to let me know that I was going to be punished.

The real irony of the whole situation was that I was stuck here at Savile for the summer. First of all, I had nowhere else to go, and second, I couldn’t find it in my heart to uproot Nicky from a situation that was obviously so beneficial for him.